IF WE CONSTITUTIONAL fundamentalists ever triumph in the courts, the person to have whispering the reminder that all glory is fleeting would be Hendrik Hertzberg. A former chief speechwriter for President Carter and now a writer for the New Yorker, he is an honest liberal—and a crafty constitutionalist. He is just out with a column on the only remaining feature of the Constitution that the parchment itself says can’t be amended, namely the equal representation in the Senate of each state, no matter what its population. Hertzberg’s column came up on the scope when I started poking around about the logic of the Senate, which has been creeping into the national conversation. There was the 13-hour filibuster against drones mounted by Rand Paul. There are all of Harry Reid’s threats to use the “nuclear option”—to change the chamber’s rules so that certain filibusters can be ended with just a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes now required.

14 September 2013 Reginald Wormwood, Esq.Wormwood Consulting, Inc.1600 K Street N.W. Washington D.C. 20006 My dear Wormwood, As you know, I have to pass on your accounts, and by Hades you’ve kept me busy! There’s dinner here, dinner there, dinner everywhere. Do you ever eat at home? And the places you go. The Inn at Little Washington, Komi, CityZen: restaurants that cater to lobbyists and one percenters. Plus I’ve looked at your entrées. Candied lark’s tongue. Eight-spice octopus. Snake venom soup. Honestly, Wormwood, we both know how much we cleaned up during the Fed’s bailout of the bankers, but there is a limit! Still, you tell me it’s not for yourself but rather research for the mission field. Don’t I know, you ask me, that gluttony is one of our Seven Cardinal Virtues? My dear fellow, don’t lecture me about morals! Need I remind you that I was a senior lecturer in Immoral Theology when you were a young devil setting fire to little puppies’ tails?

Spectator senior editor W. James Antle III has observed, the very real gains we have made in the area of border security—we now control something like 57 percent of our southern border—came only after the Bush-era quest for comprehensive reform was abandoned.

August is no more, and apparently so is the medal held by our risible 2009 Nobel laureate. President Barack H. Obama, the winner of that year’s prize for peace, has become a fierce proponent of the Tyrrell Doctrine, much to the surprise of his wavering supporters in the Neighborhood Coalition for Peace, Freedom, and a Gratis Mobile Phone With No Strings Attached.

﻿Dr. George Washington Plunkitt, our prize-winning political
analyst, has recently retired from a staff position with the House
Ethics Committee and is working on volume eight of his memoirs,
tentatively titled Angela’s Rashes. But he has
graciously consented to once again advise American statespersons in
these times of trouble. Address all correspondence to The Bootblack
Stand, c/o plunkitt@spectator.org.

I can’t remember ever disagreeing with Grover Norquist. But his commentary on immigration (“Samuel Gompers Versus Reagan,” TAS, Septemeber 2013) left me wondering which one of us has missed the point. Mr. Norquist seems to argue that House and Senate conservatives are out of step by resisting the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform scheme. He cites polls, statistics, and election results to prove his point that the most conservatives lose the anti-immigration battle. But he fails to ever mention (well, maybe once) illegal immigration. Read that again. Mr. Norquist seems to have lost the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Few conservatives that I know are anti-immigration. Our problem with the current proposal is that it does nothing to first stem the flow of illegal immigrants. All we want is a secure border to ensure that existing immigration laws can actually work. Without enforcement, we get the current situation: millions of illegals have overstayed visas and millions have climbed the fence. And not all are here with good intentions.

It’s hard not to like him, even though the act wears thin. Last Memorial Day weekend I happened to be at Cornell, where rising Democratic star Cory Booker delivered the Convocation address on the Saturday of the weekend-long commencement. There he stood in the cold spring wind inside the football stadium, earnestly and entertainingly thundering away, filling the air with his usual mush: “…your generation will be determined by how you come together as lovers—lovers of peace and lovers of justice”; “the power of the people is always greater than the people in power”; “I immediately reached for some Chubby Hubby”—the last apropos his only superficially friendly feud with Conan O’Brien, who had dissed Newark, New Jersey, on his show and compelled Booker to defend his city. Which he did, via YouTube, speaking to a single camera and flanked by a single U.S. flag in a video that went viral.

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